With Year Of The Tiger Approaching, Expect Even More Pressure On Remaining Wild Populations - AFP

And by the way, FUCK Chinese traditional medicine!

Next year, according to the Chinese calendar, is the Year of the Tiger but conservationists say the omens are inauspicious for an animal on the brink of extinction. If anything, the tiger's year in the Chinese zodiac may hasten its demise, conservationists fear, with festive demand for its skin and body parts encouraging poachers to hunt the few animals that still remain in the wild.

"The Year of the Tiger will put more pressure on wild tigers," Michael Baltzer, head of the WWF Tiger Initiative, told AFP during a tiger conservation conference held in Kathmandu which wound up on Friday. "The use of tiger parts in traditional Chinese medicine has fallen, but the trend of giving tiger parts as gifts and souvenirs is growing," Baltzer said, adding that he expected this demand to increase next year.

"There is a certain consumer group who want to use tiger parts to show how wealthy they are, as a status symbol, and this group of people is increasing."

Ed. - Oh, and FUCK them, too.

Experts from the lobby group Save the Tiger Fund estimate that only 3,200 tigers survive in the wild, down from 100,000 a century ago, mainly due to poaching and loss of habitat in south and southeast Asia.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/For_the_tiger_a_year_closer_to_extinction_999.html

The south Chinese tiger will soon be extinct within our lifetimes